The Derby

This is the big one – £1.25m in prize money, and the race that the festival is named for. If you’ve read the profile for the festival, you’ll already know that it’s one of the most important races in the UK and it’s also one of the oldest.

The distance is slightly strange – 1 mile, 4 furlongs and 10 yards. This due more to historical events, where the course was slightly altered, rather than having the intention from the outset that this be the race’s length. I am sure the conspiracy theorists out there could come up with something though!

In recent years, the winners read like a who’s who of top jockeys; Kieren Fallon, Frankie Dettori and Jonny Murtagh. However, past Derby’s have not gone without incident. Famously, in the 1913 Derby, Emily Davidson threw herself in front of a horse as a protest as part of the suffragette movement to get women the vote and she was killed by her actions, though fortunately this was a one off incident.